Are Protests Against Violence in the Bay Area Becoming the Norm?

Are Protests Against Violence in the Bay Area Becoming the Norm?

By Zach Groff

Last weekend, just like many weekends in the Bay Area, DxE activists were kept busy. After disrupting a pig roast Wednesday evening and a Trader Joe's grand opening on Thursday morning, activists stormed a second pig roast on Saturday. The reactions, unsurprisingly, were far from warm. Amid all the reactions, though, we learned something interesting.

"Expect protesters," the management of the Saturday pig roast told the employees at the bar where it occurred. The bar went so far as to have vegan staff members pose as protesters for a practice run and to offer extra vegan options at the pig roast as a gesture at appeasement. They were not the only management to react to a new expectation of protests for animals. After DxE activists disrupted the grand opening of a Whole Foods in Santa Clara, California in August, Whole Foods declined to even have a grand opening for their Walnut Creek store. (We'll see what Trader Joe's does next time.)

That is, just as fur stores and animal circuses can expect protests for their gratuitous cruelty, food festivals, restaurants, and grocery stores beginning to expect the same thing when they celebrate violence..